Dhalgren

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The bright scales, claws, and fangs careened after him, striated and rigid as a television image from a monster film suddenly halted in its projector: it was the dragon he'd seen his first night in the park with Tak. He could tell because griffon and mantis glimmered just behind, and sometimes through it. Bleached out like ghosts, the others clustered down, streaked with sidelight. Kidd ran on, heart hammering, breath scoring his nasal roof.

He fell against the bottom door; it sagged forward. He staggered out. The others ran behind. Harsh light lay out harsh shadow, dispersing the lobby's grey as he crossed.

'How do you get down into the fucking basement?' He hammered the elevator bell.

'The downstairs is locked,' Thirteen said. 'I tried to get in when we first got—'

Both elevator doors rolled open.

Dragon Lady, light extinguished, swung around him into the one with the car, wrenched away the plate above the buttons: The plate clattered on the car floor as she did something with switches. 'Okay, I got both doors locked open.'

Kidd looked back — the two other apparitions swayed forward among the others standing — and called: 'Where's the rope?' He held the other jamb and leaned into the breezy shaft. Girders rose by hazy brick. 'I can't see too much.' Above and in the wind a voice echoed:

Oh, no! He's down there! He must be terribly hurt!

And another:

No, Mom, come back. Kidd's down there. Mom, please!

Bobby, Bobby, are you all right? Please, Bobby! Oh, dear God!

Kidd strained to see: the vaguest suggestion of light up in the distance — was it some upper, open door? 'Mrs Richards!' His shout vaulted about the shaft. 'You get back from that door!'

Oh, Bobby! Kidd, is he all right? Oh, please, let him be all right.

Mom, come back, will you?

Then lights around him moved forward, harshening the brick, the painted steel. On the shaft wall shadows of heads swung; some grew, some faded; new shadows grew.

'You see anything?' Dragon Lady asked, crowding his shoulder. 'Here.' Her arm came up, hooked his. 'Lean on out further if you want.'

He glanced back at her.

She said, her head to the side: 'I ain't gonna let you fall, motherfucker!'

So he hooked up his arm. 'Got me?'

'Yeah.'

Their elbows made a hot, comfortable lock.

He leaned forward, swaying into the dark. She let him slowly out.

The other lights had filled the door, flushing the shaft with doubled shadows.

'You see anything in there?' which was not Dragon Lady's voice but Denny's.

The junk down there: On darkness like velvet, cigarette packages, chewing-gum papers, cigarettes and cigarette butts, match books, envelopes and, there to one side, heaped up … the glitter in it identified the wrist. 'Yeah, I can see him… I think.'

Can you see where he is? Bobby? Bobby, Kidd, can you see him? Oh, my God, he fell all that way! Oh, he must be hurt, so badly! I can't hear him. Is he unconscious? Oh, can't you see where he is yet?

Momma, please, please come back from here!

Behind him, Dragon Lady said with soft brutality: 'Christ, I wish that bitch would shut the fuck up!'

'Look, man,' Thirteen said, behind them, 'that's her kid down there!'

'Don't 'man' me, Thirteen,' Dragon Lady said; and Kidd felt her grip — well, not loosen so much as shift, about an inch; his shoulder tensed. 'I still wish she'd keep — quiet!'

'I brought the crowbar,' somebody said. 'And a screwdriver. Do you need a crowbar or a screwdriver?'

'After that fall,' Dragon Lady said, 'there can't be too much left of him. He gotta be dead.'

'Shit, Dragon Lady,' Thirteen said, 'his Momma's right up there!'

'I said: He's gotta be dead! You heard me?'

Mom, come on!

Can you see him down there? I can't see anything. I can't hear anything. Oh, Bobby, Bobby! Can you hear your mommy? Please, Bobby!

The grip suddenly sagged; for a moment Kidd thought he was falling — Dragon Lady, still holding, had leaned in behind him. Her voice roared about his ears. 'YOUR SON IS DEAD, LADY!' And Kidd was pulled away. 'Come on, let's get you back.'

Thirteen, with an unhappy expression, shook his head.

Denny, up front now, gripped a length of wound clothes line. 'You want to get him up? You take the rope. We'll hold you while you go down.'

Kidd took hold of the doubled end, ducked his head through, and hooked his arms over. (Griffon and Mantis flanked the door.) Thirteen, Denny, and Dragon Lady were handing out the other end among them.

'You just hold on,' Kidd said. 'I'll climb down.' He got onto his knees at the sill, holding the edge (one rough hand lost in griffon light), dropped one leg down, then the other. The shaft at his back was cool. He could not tell if the wind came from above or below. He went over the edge, had to keep away from the wall first with his knee, then with his foot.

'You all right?' Denny asked, legs wide, fists close.

Kidd grunted, pulling on the ropes, taut around his back (pushing something glass into his back) and taut under his arms: 'Yeah.' The slanted bar of the door mechanism slid under his bare foot. His sandal toe scraped metal.

Swaying at either side of the door, the apparitions loomed, luminous.

Once he called; 'You can lower it a little faster than that. I'm okay.'

'Sorry,' which was Thirteen, catching his breath; and the rope.

His shin scraped the basement door-sill. His bare foot hit something and slipped, in either grease or blood.

He turned, while the rope sagged around him, and looked at the — he had to be dead.

The shaft was momentarily silent, except for wind.

Finally Dragon Lady called down: 'You still okay…?'

'Yeah.' Kidd took a breath. 'I'll tie the rope around him. You can haul him up.' He slipped the rope from under his arms, pulled it over his head, but left it around one shoulder; he stepped forward on the oozy filth, stooped, and tugged a leg from where it had wedged between two blackened bumper plates.

'…is he alive?' Thirteen called.

Kidd took another breath. 'Naw.' He pulled at the arm, got a grip around the chest, which was all soft against him. His own shirt front soaked immediately. Blood dribbled along his forearm. Standing, he dragged the body back a step. A foot caught, pulled free; the leg fell back against his thigh — his thigh wet, warm, to the knee. Dragging it, limp, reaching for the rope, he thought: Is this what turns on blood and blade freaks? He thought of Tak, he thought of George, hunted in himself for any idle sexuality: he found it, disconcertingly, a small warmth above the loins that, as he bared his teeth and the rope slid through his sticky hand, went out. 'Let me have another couple of feet!' Well, he had found it before in auto wrecks, in blue plush, in roots, in wet wood with the bark just stripped.

Rope dropped over his shoulder; the voices eighteen floors up came again:

Oh, Mom—

Is he all right? Kidd, have you found him yet? Bobby? Bobby, can you hear me at all?

Oh, Mom, you heard—

Bobby, are you all right?

He got the rope around the chest, got a clumsy knot done — like trying to do it with your hands in glue — that maybe would hold. Bobby sagged against Kidd's knees, heavy enough to make his